Debunking Music Myths Part I-The Philosophers Talk Music

Even thousands of years ago, philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates understood the tremendous influence music has on its listeners.

Aristotle and How Music Effects Emotions:

“Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul…when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.”

“Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state, and ought to be prohibited. When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.”

Plato and Moral Decline of Greece:

“They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what was just and lawful in music…And by composing licentious works, and adding to them words as licentious, they have inspired the multitude with lawlessness and boldness, and made them fancy that they could judge for themselves about melody and song…in music there first arose the universal conceit of omniscience and general lawlessness; freedom came following afterwards, and men, fancying that they knew what they did not know, had no longer any fear, and the absence of fear begets shamelessness. For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty?”

Socrates and the Instrument of Indoctrination:

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.”

And Finally:

Sixth-century Chinese philosopher Shu Ching:

“for changing people’s manners and altering their customs there is nothing better than music.”